I was pretty far gone, but not so far gone that I thought anyone with half a toehold in reality would think what we were doing was a good idea.

The things that break your heart when you think there`s nothing left to break

I'm a century old, an impossible age, and my brain has no anchor in the present. Instead it drifts, nearly always to the same shore. Today, as most days, it is 1962. The year I discovered love.

She frowned at him. 'You are in love with solitude.' 'Is there a better cure for the world than solitude?

The real truth is that the war didn't have much to do with it except that it provided a perfect limbo in which two people who were too young and too related could start kissing without anything or anyone making us stop.

I, a late riser, fantasise about getting up every morning at 5 A.M. to fetch the horses in from the fields.

Staying alive was what we did to pass the time.